I’ve been going through a lot of shit inside my head since last night.

Basically, I’ve been going back and forth on The Pedant: at one end of the pendulum, there’s I’m not getting the level of attention I need from him. On the other end, there’s but extenuating circumstances, Aspie, new job, blah blah blah.

This morning I had the epiphany that, yes, the extenuating circumstances are probably valid reasons for him to be the way he is, but it doesn’t matter. I’m not happy. The angst has been outweighing the good stuff with him since he got that job, if not longer.

I never know whether The Pedant is working a day shift or a night shift on any given day. All I know is that when I wrote to him at around 9pm last night to say “Here are some days when I’m free – can we get together?” kind of thing, he wrote back immediately to say no. I got frustrated and basically wrote back “Well when will you be free?” and he did not write back immediately to that one. Which bugged the shit out of me. Yeah, I know, maybe he genuinely was unable to respond to that second thing promptly, even though he was able to email me just moments before. He could’ve gone out or whatever. Orrrrr, maybe he was sitting there reading my second email thinking “Meh, I don’t really wanna see her, I’m just gonna let this sit for a while.” My infamous paranoia started spinning its wheels.

And so when I woke up this morning and he still hadn’t replied, I contemplated the fact that pretty much all my friends have told me “If he really wanted to see you, he would see you.” I contemplated the fact that even though I’m constantly burned out from work, too, I would still make time for him if he wanted, but this doesn’t seem to go both ways. I contemplated the fact that The Pedant never seemed to know what his upcoming schedule would be when I asked when we’d see each other next, but when I said “Yo, come see me on these dates – I’ll be free then” he suddenly knew his schedule two weeks in advance to know he couldn’t make it.

And I kind of started freaking the fuck out.

I composed what was basically a breakup email. A pretty long one, beginning by citing the fact that he’d asked me once never to bail on him without at least saying why. I did cap my rant with “I don’t think I can do this anymore – I need ____ and ____ and ____ from you and I’m not getting it” which in theory leaves room for him to step up. But I was frankly expecting this to be the end.

My mouse pointer was literally hovering over the send button when The Pedant replied to the previous email, the “tell me when you’re free” one. After five weeks of seeming weirdly, suspiciously evasive about his schedule, he finally gave me a detailed rundown of exactly what’s going on with him – including a detailed work schedule that lets me see exactly when he’s off. That’s the good part of his message. The bad part is that the schedule is in the form of a six-week rotation; he didn’t write any actual dates, he wrote a big list like “two days on, two days off, nights. Three days on, two days off, nights. Two days on, two days off, days” and then told me which week of the rotation he’s currently in. I’m supposed to transcribe this shit onto my calendar, figure out when both of us have days off, and let him know when that is so we can maybe get together.

I am in no mood to do all this fucking work, just to probably be shot down because he has errands to run or some shit. But I feel like, in writing all this stuff down for me so I finally know what’s going on, he’s at least trying to give me the predictability he knows I prefer.

Part of me wishes I’d hit send on that breakup email ten minutes sooner. Closure can be such a relief, even when it’s sad.

As it was, I felt like there was juuuust enough hope that maybe I shouldn’t drop the hammer just yet.

I ended up writing him basically an ultimatum email. I’ll probably transcribe it later; no time now. The gist was “Hey, I’m not happy lately and if you want to keep seeing me there are some things I need. If you can’t provide these things, I might have to bail. Kthx. p.s. Can we just go ahead and call what we’re doing a “relationship”? We never did give it a label and that’s starting to bug me. p.p.s. TELL ME YOU LIKE ME DAMMIT. P. p.p.s. I’ve been trying to work up the nerve to tell you I love you for a few months now.” I figure, I’ve got one foot out the door, anyway; I’ve been feeling kind of miserable; there’s nothing to lose. Might as well come clean about everything that’s been on my mind.

Since I sent that email, I’ve been vacillating wildly between thinking my tone was too harsh or, possibly, too polite; I’ve also been vacillating wildly between believing he’ll get back to me offering to fix things and that he’ll get back to me saying “Nope, too demanding, forget it.” And now that I’m slightly less emotional I’m thinking maybe I don’t need all the things I asked for…but I don’t want to seem like a pushover by writing a wheedling follow-up email. Anyway, we’re kind of in a negotiation here, right? So it’s best to aim high so there’s room for him to bargain me down.

Fuck. I hope he doesn’t bail on me. I hope at the very least he’ll try to negotiate, or ask me for clarification, or something. I really don’t think I’m asking him for too much, and if he bails I’ll always wonder whether he misconstrued what I was asking for or if he understood perfectly well but just couldn’t be arsed to do the few basic things I wanted.